


even in another time

by athousandvictories



Series: in your solitude of bruises [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Another ep. 6 fix-it, Geralt POV, Introspection & bickering feat. a handjob, Jaskier takes initiative, M/M, Pining but make it brusque
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22258687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandvictories/pseuds/athousandvictories
Summary: Geralt isnotgoing to fucking plead."Jaskier."Shit.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: in your solitude of bruises [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1603204
Comments: 124
Kudos: 1966





	even in another time

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
> Art by [kritastrophe](https://kritastrophe.tumblr.com/)  
>   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> “someone will remember us  
> I say  
> even in another time”
> 
> ― Sappho

It doesn't bother Geralt, and mostly, this is because he doesn't think about it. 

He hadn't thought about it, anyway, before Yennefer. There are many things that separate him from humanity, and sterility is the least among them. People flinch away from his amber eyes and the swords strapped to his back, and possibly how he smells _—_ at least, they once did. Before Jaskier took the considerable liberty of dotting scented oils on most of his belongings. Or maybe the bard has just put his thrice-damned fingers all over everything Geralt owns too many times. Either way, Geralt's armor smells like sandalwood now.

Anyway. His inability to impregnate a woman does not bother anyone, compared to the other things, and so it does not bother him. 

He wants to know why it doesn't, since it matters to _her_ so much. From what he's seen of it, women have got the short end of the stick when it comes to children. Labor is obviously... not pleasant. And child rearing is the same sacrificial pain, spread thin over a number of years so that the difficulty is more easily ignored.

Something hovers on dark wings at the edge of his mind _—_ guilt, maybe. Geralt hunts it down and drowns it. His Child Surprise _—_ The Child Surprise, is not his concern, right now. He can hardly manage Jaskier's regrettable decision making, and Jaskier is a grown man. Though, grown is perhaps is too generous an adjective.

But this isn't about Jaskier. Well, _overall_ it is, since that's who he's meandering down the mountain to find. But he's thinking about Yennefer, right now, and Yennefer and Jaskier don't coexist well in his mind. In fairness to him, they don't coexist very well outside his mind either.

He kicks soft earth over the edges of his fire. For all that his heartbeat is slow, his body is resistant to the cold, and he doesn't need the fire, not really. Afterward he slowly circles the embers, pushing pebbles and twigs away with booted feet, letting his eyes trace the needled edges of evergreen boughs backlit by the soft orange-grey of dusk.

When the ground is smoothed to his satisfaction he settles down by remnant of the fire, arranging his weapons within reach and wrapping himself in his cloak. It smells like fucking sandalwood. 

  
*

  
He wakes before dawn. There's a faint, faint sound, definitely not natural, and his hand is already covering the hilt of his sword before he realizes that it's the sound of strumming. Fucking Jaskier.

He rolls to his feet. The fire is nonexistent now, only a soft pile of slightly blacker dirt, and his limbs are cold and stiff. He's felt worse, though, and his feet are near-silent on the scree as he gathers his pack and walks in the direction of the noise. It's not the first time he's navigated by Audible Stupidity. It won't be the last, if Jaskier manages to keep his pretty head on his moronic shoulders.

Geralt makes good time, and it's not long before he can make out the words of the song.

_oh you who must leave everything_ _that you cannot control_

 _it begins with your family,_ _but soon it comes round to your soul_

 _well I've been where you're hanging,_ _I think I can see how you're pinned_

_when you're not feeling holy your loneliness says that you've sinned_

It might have been haunting, except that it's being sung by an idiot, which makes it maudlin. All of Jaskier's compositions are either bawdy or maudlin, except for the ever-popular Ode to My Fallen Lover, which is both, and which Geralt ignores with doubled dedication.

Jaskier, for his part, ignores the world instinctively and does not even notice Geralt approaching until he is feet away. Any day, now, he will be eaten alive, and his shitty, human night-vision will be no excuse.

"Jaskier."

"Geralt." His name sounds cold. "I take it my shoveling services are required. Simply point me to the shit and I'll be happy to oblige."

Geralt is _not_ going to fucking plead.

_"Jaskier."_

Shit.

Jaskier raises his chin and leans back a little on the log where he's sitting before his fire.

"Well then, to what do I owe the honor of your presence?" His tone is venomous, and Geralt knows he deserves it.

"Forgive me."

"Whatever for, Mighty Witcher?"

"I spoke harshly."

"True!" Jaskier points at him with the lute, and then swings it back into his lap, plucking out a broken chord. "But not much more can be expected of someone who's besotted with such a spiteful b _—_ "

Geralt tilts his head minutely.

"...beautiful... lady." Jaskier spreads his arms as well as he can while holding his lute. "May I just say, that you two suit each other _perfectly_."

"Clearly."

"Oh, but you do! Before the lovely Yennefer, I thought your preternatural good looks and heart of ice were unparalleled in all the continent." Jaskier's voice dips low and quiet. "How wrong I was."

Something struggles to break the surface in Geralt's mind, and he anchors it back down without identifying it. It thrashes underwater, muted and furious, and he pays it no mind.

"Do you want my advice?" Jaskier sets the lute carefully down onto the disheveled heap of his things and swings a leg around to straddle the log. He laces his hands together and leans forward over his knees, fixing Geralt with a look of extravagant pity.

"No."

"This," Jaskier flutters his hands, "this little mess you're in. This is what happens to people who are _repressed_. When was the last time you fucked someone who liked you? And do NOT," Jaskier jumps to his feet, snapping a hand up in front of him with pointer finger raised, "do not say Yennefer, because you _know_ she doesn't. You've gone and fallen in love just because someone, admittedly a very bangable someone, had an intelligent conversation with you before they fucked you, and you were overcome by the romance of it all!" Jaskier's voice has risen in an alarming crescendo. "Admit it!"

Jaskier's prowled close enough to where he's standing that Geralt can smell him, smoke and sweat and a bit of sandalwood. An odd feeling rises in his chest and he forgets that he ought to kick it mercilessly back underwater.

"Is that so."

"Yes! Now go pine." Jaskier punctuates the sentence with a push to the center of Geralt's chest. "Somewhere." Another push. "Else!"

Geralt takes a half step back _—_ to see if Jaskier will follow, partly. Or completely. He feels the brush of a tree trunk behind him, and a low satisfaction as Jaskier stalks forward with him. The fire is far enough away that the darkness is almost complete, but he can see Jaskier's lips, twisted to show a gleam of teeth behind them. The snarl is feral, and deeply appealing.

"Geralt of Rivia," he grits out, "you intolerable, flamboyantly brokenhearted cunt. Leave."

Geralt doesn't.

Jaskier swallows, and Geralt gazes at the rise and fall of his throat, and then Jaskier kisses him. Geralt is still a moment before he responds, opens his mouth to skims his tongue along Jaskier's lip. Jaskier makes a strangled noise, and shoves, and Geralt lets the tree become solid against his spine. There's a moment where it's only mouths and tongues, and then Jaskier's deft fingers are on the fastening of his pants, and Geralt's reflexes fail, somehow. The layers of his armor are oppressively hot, suddenly, and he's _behind_ , everything happening a second before he can process it, and Jaskier's callused fingertips are skimming down his _—_ fuck _—_ _fuck_. 

"Fuck."

Jaskier's hand tightens, and then disappears for an agonizing space of seconds. Geralt hears Jaskier spit into his palm, muffled by the heavy beats of his heart in his ears, coming so quickly that they sound almost human.

Then Jaskier grabs him again, and strokes, and his thigh starts to shake. He digs his heel hard into the ground to steady it. A handjob in a cold forest in the middle of the night has no right to be this good, and maybe Jaskier is right, maybe it is better if your lover likes you. 

Jaskier braces his hand, his other hand, beside Geralt's head on the tree, and Geralt reaches up to grip his forearm. It's a moment before he realizes his hand is clamped too tight, that he's going to leave bruises on Jaskier's wrist. Jaskier does not seem to notice. He's muttering in time with the rhythm of his hand, gasping after each sentence.

_damn you, Geralt_

_you rude,_ _stifled prick_

_you're such_

_a_ _fucking—_

Geralt reaches out with his spare hand and palms Jaskier through his trousers, to shut him up. Jaskier hisses, and then he does shut up, so he can grind into the touch.

Geralt can't resist looking down between them; it's filthy and gratifying and his thigh is shaking too hard to stop, now. He throws his head back, looks up and away from it, hair catching on bark. Jaskier, damn him, sinks his teeth into Geralt's neck, and then it's too much, and he comes.

He lets his head fall forward slowly onto Jaskier's shoulder, after, and Jaskier strokes his head. Geralt would push him away, but he is spent, exhausted, and so he allows Jaskier to wrap his clean hand around the back of his neck and kiss whispered insults into his temple. 

Jaskier wipes his other hand on Geralt's thigh, and that is going to smell, now, but Geralt can only exhale a raspy laugh into Jaskier's collarbone.

  
*

  
Geralt wakes a second time just before sunrise, head pressed into the side of Jaskier's ribcage. He's warm everywhere their bodies are touching, where his shoulder presses against Jaskier's hip, where Jaskier's calf is wedged under his thigh. He's warm on the other side too, where his sword lies between his right hand and the silver-dappled coals of the fire.

The heavy smell of sex and man overwhelms the crisp pine scent of the forest; aside from that, the serenity is unmarred. He doesn't move for a while, just gazes into the soft sky and and mulls, listening to Jaskier. Geralt's not sure how he can sleep like that, with his stomach pressed against the earth, head pillowed under his arm, but his breaths come soft and even, like waves breaking on a shore far away.

His thoughts fall to Yennefer, eventually, though he tries to steer them around her. He shakes his head and sits up fractionally, to stir the fire, and Jaskier shifts beside him.

Jaskier blinks blearily and then turns his head away, hand reaching out to where his lute lies beside him in it's leather case. It's a foolish gesture, the lute could hardly run away, and it's... endearing. Geralt grits his teeth.

Gods. He is uncomfortably reminded of Jaskier panting in his ear.

_is this_ really _all it takes, Witcher?_ **  
**

Apparently.

"Hey!" Jaskier's fingers snap in front of his face. "Get off."

Geralt leans back on his elbows, lifts his hips so that Jaskier can tug the corner of his cloak out from underneath him. Jaskier staggers to his feet like a fawn that's never once used it's legs and wraps himself in it with a melodramatic shiver.

"Some of us _feel the cold_ , you know. Gods."

Geralt doesn't reply, just gets to his feet and sits on the log.

He stares at the fire in blessed silence for a while before Jaskier can take it no longer.

"You're... unusually broody. Are you..." he turns, peering around the hood of his cloak, as if he somehow intends to read Geralt's expressionless profile, "no. No. No, no, no! Do not think about her! Melitele spare me! I jack you off _—_ brilliantly, I might add _—_ and you're already back on _that_."

"No." Yes. _Maybe._ "She wants a child."

"She _—_ what? That's _—_ that _is_ bewildering _—_ no! Stop _—_ stop musing on the perplexities of witches with perky tits and ponder my contributions! Have a little gratitude! Honestly, Geralt. I'm right here." Jaskier wraps his cloak around him a little tighter, huffily, and sits down, even though there is definitely not room for them both on the log. There's another silence, and Geralt savours it as much as he can with his personal space so invaded. It doesn't last long.

"Actually, it's not that baffling, really. The grandest life is meaningless if no heart is touched by it's splendour, you know? Eternal beauty and power is overrated, is what I'm saying. Hey! Are you listening?"

"Mm."

"A child's heart is always touched by their parent, even if they'd rather it wasn't. But _—_ you don't need to have a child, for it all to mean something, y'know?" **  
**

Geralt gives him an arched look.

"I'm not calling Yennefer an idiot! She is one, but I'm not calling her that _—_ ow! Do not _—_ do not think that you can push me off this log! I'm aware that I come by a legacy more easily than most, I'm a bard."

"A legacy."

Jaskier inhales. Exhales.

"Yes. Even if it's just a herdswoman singing on the hillside in a hundred years, the world will know that I loved you, Geralt, and that you let me. How could they really think otherwise?" Jaskier lightens his tone abruptly, deliberately. "I flatter you quite heavily in the songs, if you hadn't noticed."

Geralt does not change his expression, but he turns to meet Jaskier's eyes.

Jaskier holds his gaze only for a second, then he looks abruptly away, out at the smear of sunrise that silhouettes the trees.

The soft light catches on his features, on the tip of his nose and the edges of his mouth, the curve of his chin. 

"Someone will remember us."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! All comments warmly welcomed :)
> 
> Note: The song Jaskier sings is The Sisters of Mercy by Leonard Cohen.


End file.
